Posted in response to a conversation about “changes in academia” with a friend of mine

It is not that simple here in the US my dear friend John. Perhaps things are different in Australia or Europe, I do not know; but here in the US in academia, if you are tenure track or looking for a job, you do not have the power to question the status quo. Graduate schools can be very tyrannical places; graduate students are controlled by very powerful ideologies. And if you resist these ideologies you end up isolated without mentors. Imagine if you are looking for a job and apply to a department that is getting resources from a specific organization or group that ideologically differs from your perspective. Then when you are hired in a department and you eventually become tenured, you have to think twice about what you propose when you are asking for resources. Many full professors, chairs, deans do not want to change and these are the same people that per review your work and control the resources. (When we talk about these issues in academia I think about people like Cantor or Boltzmann, they have paid for their honest and justified transgressions) And then, even if you acquire a lot of power, and you have the administration and the faculty on your side and the resources, you have the accreditation commotions…
We need power, a lot of power to change our institutions. You need resources, you need chairs of committees, you need the faculty and the administration supporting you, and not only one, but hundreds of people pushing in the same direction. Fortunately, I think we are gradually moving in that direction and we have to continue working. On the other hand, higher education has other serious problems like sustainability, adaptation to new technologies and other changes, and people needing decent jobs. Many people here are struggling; many of the new jobless graduate students have families to support. In the department that I chair, we have 12 lectures and only 2 tenured professors. I also coordinate distance ed in my college, and we have a legion of online instructors, most of them are also part timers. They are trying to innovate but do not have the time because they are teaching too many units. Most of our programmers and assistants are also part timers. We have too many graduate students and few available positions. Furthermore, we need changes and at the same time we have to survive with very limited resources.
What I am trying to say is criticism is ok, but at the same time I understand that people are afraid to propose changes because of their career situations. This is why I respect people like Martin Dougiamas who decided to maintain Moodle as an open source LMS in spite of his personal needs.